From the makers of Horn and Dark Meadow, Project Awakened. This is a Chicago development company where most Chicago GWJers know at least one of their employees. $25 (or $20 early bird special) gets you this hugely ambitious game and close beta access ... in late 2014.

This and At The Gates are the two big projects I'm excited about right now. Unfortunately, Awakened set a much higher goal.

Hypatian wrote:

Words... are a big deal.

Enix wrote:

The only way writers are going to get better is if they get some decent damned editing.

I was listening to the Jumping the Shark podcast on my morning commute, and Bill mentioned that Conquistador's next Kickstarter should be starting tomorrow. It's for War Stories.

It looks pretty cool, is supposed to be on the more accessible end of the war gaming spectrum, and those miniatures look amazing!

Will watch out for that tomorrow, just to figure out what's going on. The description says it's a miniatures game, but the components suggest it's a block game.

It appears to be both. More specifically, the game itself is blocks. The minis are kickstarter rewards and add ons.

Bill Abner in Kickstarter Comments wrote:

The $60 game is not minis, just blocks. If you bought the $175 package it is 14 minis. Actually 15, but one is a British anti-tank gun (they come in packs of three, one German, one Soviet and one British).

and

The minis are really nice indeed but you can play it 100% as a block game.

The image is a link. And I've plugged the Kickstarter in the Adventure Gaming thread, but I guess I should have pluged it here too.

Asylum is by Agustín Cordes, the guy who did the adventure game Scratches, one of the best horror adventure games out there. Asylum looks to be even better. Look at the Kickstarter and back it!

And yeah. I held off for a long time but once I started Kickstarting I've spent way too much money this way. In fact, I started off at the $15 level for Asylum then later bumped it up to $30. I really want to see this.

My wife and I have pledged to Last Days of Coney Island. There are some good rewards in there if you're into Ralph Bakshi's earlier movies. My wife was on top of the Wizards package within minutes. I might make a second pledge just to have my own doodle.

Ever since we brought our award-winning Ascension Deckbuilding Game to iOS, we’ve heard the same questions asked time and again: When is it coming to Android? When is it coming to PC?

Trust us—we've heard you loud and clear. We’re thrilled to have such passionate fans, and we want to be able to bring you the gaming experience you demand and deserve.

Since we originally released Ascension in 2010 as our new company's first product, the game has grown dramatically. We have released three expansions—Return of the Fallen, Storm of Souls, and Immortal Heroes—along with dozens of supplemental promo cards, and our fans keep asking for more. The Ascension iOS app has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times and players have logged over three million games played online. We think it's time to take Ascension to the next level.

We want to build a team dedicated to Ascension Online. We want not only to bring Ascension to Android and PC, but also to make it bigger and better than ever, with all-new features like these:

Online Tournaments
Campaign Mode
Android & PC support

They're at $120k out of $125k right now, 4 days left to go.

$10 gets you some promo cards, and unlocks all the expansions up to Immortal Heros when it launches on Android and PC. $50 gets you all that, plus an advanced copy of the next PHYSICAL expansion.

indiegogo is unlike kickstarter in that they take your money regardless of the project meeting their projected goals. This means if a project is under funded they still get the money and can attempt to fulfill the rewards, but I do not think they are in anyway forced to. This means they could say in the end, well we didnt meet our goals but thanks for the funds. Or they could say in the end, well we didn't reach our goal so we will be delayed for x long because of it. It is good in that if you really want to support a project because you agree with it or want to back them, they get the money regardless of meeting their goal. it is bad if you are backing it just for the reward system, cause to my knowledge there are no guarantees of that reward.

INteresting, thatnks for that info, it's a little scary when that is a possability.

In the case of this project they are goign to supply all contributors regardless.
From thier page

In any case the watch will be produced !

VEA has experience with industrialization. Every contributor will have its Buddy !!

so hopefully they will deliver

Ok, decided to double check some stuff:
Indiegogo does require that you get your rewards:

Campaign owners are required by our Terms of Use to fulfill their perks. If a campaign owner does not fulfill a perk and has been unresponsive, please notify Indiegogo at [email protected]. We will get in touch with the campaign owner and can suspend their account (if necessary). You can also use our terms of service in a U.S. court of law, should you choose to take any legal action against the campaign team.

But, no where can i find any issue of your "perks" coming in later than initially considered.

Now, as a side note:

If a campaign has not raised enough money by its deadline to cover the cost of disbursement, you may see that your contribution has been refunded after the campaign ends.

Though I think the project your backing is most likely safe from this.

I wasn't to clear on some of the stuff since I know that their "flexible" funding plan is pretty different from Kickstarter's:

Campaign owners can choose between two different funding options before launching their campaign that will determine whether or not they will receive all funds raised by the end of their campaign, depending on whether the campaign has met its funding goal by its deadline:

Flexible Funding campaigns will receive all funds raised, regardless of whether or not the campaign has met its funding goal by its deadline. Campaign owners will be required to fulfill all perks claimed.
Fixed Funding campaigns will only receive funds raised if they meet their funding goal by their deadline. If the campaign does not meet its funding goal by its deadline, we will refund all contributions within 5 days after the campaign's end and the campaign owner will not be required to fulfill Perks.

BTW, just want to throw kickstarter's promise on rewards too:

Is a creator legally obligated to fulfill the promises of their project?
Yes. Kickstarter's Terms of Use require creators to fulfill all rewards of their project or refund any backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill. (This is what creators see before they launch.) We crafted these terms to create a legal requirement for creators to follow through on their projects, and to give backers a recourse if they don't. We hope that backers will consider using this provision only in cases where they feel that a creator has not made a good faith effort to complete the project and fulfill.

You should be very careful here, because despite all of Kickstarter's or IndieGoGo's promises the rate of failure is actually pretty high for projects that are fully funded (last I read, 75% of projects have delayed and 25% failed to deliver at all after more than 8 months of delays), and I don't think refunds are all that common in practice. You are technically donating the money, any legal guarantee you have of getting your reward is far weaker than it would be if you were buying a product.

I pretty much back either products where I want to support the creator even if they fail (like indie game devs), or where I'm almost entirely confident that they won't fail (like, say, Dreamfall).

You should be very careful here, because despite all of Kickstarter's or IndieGoGo's promises the rate of failure is actually pretty high for projects that are fully funded (last I read, 75% of projects have delayed and 25% failed to deliver at all after more than 8 months of delays), and I don't think refunds are all that common in practice. You are technically donating the money, any legal guarantee you have of getting your reward is far weaker than it would be if you were buying a product.

I pretty much back either products where I want to support the creator even if they fail (like indie game devs), or where I'm almost entirely confident that they won't fail (like, say, Dreamfall).

Thanks for the warning.
I felt confident in that they seem to already be an established development/design studio. They already have products in the market and I guess I'm just really hopeful.

I didn't really like the pebble. Wanted touch screen and somehow, maybe due to the size of the device, they are able to get a longer battery life with the Buddy.

You should be very careful here, because despite all of Kickstarter's or IndieGoGo's promises the rate of failure is actually pretty high for projects that are fully funded (last I read, 75% of projects have delayed and 25% failed to deliver at all after more than 8 months of delays), and I don't think refunds are all that common in practice. You are technically donating the money, any legal guarantee you have of getting your reward is far weaker than it would be if you were buying a product.

I pretty much back either products where I want to support the creator even if they fail (like indie game devs), or where I'm almost entirely confident that they won't fail (like, say, Dreamfall).

For both sites you "technically" can try to use a small claims court to go after the company to get a refund if they fail to deliver on "rewards"/"perks". Though I doubt it would be all that useful and would probably take a good chunk of time.

Now, on to that fun little fact of "Among technology and design-related projects, 75 percent didn’t finish on time". Going through the paper I find the section where this comes from. So lets start with some initial facts for the statement.
What was his selection data pool:

I used the 471 successful Kickstarter projects in the categories of Design and Technology that had promised delivery dates for rewards to
funders before July, 2012.

More information on said data:

Out of the 471 projects, 381 had clearly identifiable outcomes. A total of 316 projects promised to deliver products and an addition 65 offered giveaways (such as “making-of” documentaries, project t-shirts, or other results that were not finished products). As of the time of the analysis, 3 projects had issued refunds, and 11 had apparently stopped responding to backers. The direct failure rate, therefore was 14 out of 381 products, or .036.

Now, here is an interesting part:

Further, the projects that were not responding totaled just $21,324 in pledges, compared to nearly $4.5 million for the remaining projects.

Why I find these things interesting? Because the quote that is used is many times applied to all of kickstarter (Like switchbreak's quote of it) and not applied to just the design and technology which is the place where you are expected to get the most delays and failure (prototyping a new device is never without at least some setback).

Lets keep going, lets move on to the actual quote:

Only 24.9% of projects delivered on time, and 33% had yet to deliver. To determine the rate at which delays occur, and the underlying causes of delayed products, I used a Cox proportional hazard model to predict the degree of delay.

Now hold on, what is this last part? a proportional hazard model? Wiki to the rescue! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proport...
Hmm, I do not understand why this was used, maybe someone else who is more familiar with this stuff can explain the reason to use such a model when you could of just used a point layout to show the percentage that failed? Also it seems that according to his stats 33% had yet to deliver, but I didn't see any of them stating that they will never deliver or the time frame of 8 months. The only delay time frame I can find is this:

Of the 247 projects that delivered goods, the mean delay was 1.28 months (sd=1.56). Of the 126 projects that were delayed, the mean delay to date was 2.4 months, (sd=1.97).

In the end, the quote is great for getting heads turning and articles read, but it can easily be abused and used to give the wrong idea to people. This is not me saying that all kickstarters are 100% at delivering products, or should be trusted. Instead I think someone should get some real data (this report was based on data he got from a Jeanne Pi (who wrote her own article here http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/17/th...) which she got from kickstarter? Well no, it the report it says

I used data extracted from the Kickstarter, the largest crowdfunding site. In coordination with Jeanne Pi, I located 24,503 successful projects, 26,483 failed projects, 4,073 “live” projects, and just over 100 cancelled projects. Kickstarter, which publishes overview statistics, lists 26,017 successful and 33,098 failed projects. While we therefore have 94% of successful projects, the data is limited to 80% of failed projects.

So they extracted the data rather than asking kickstarter to give it to them, and their data was missing to what kickstarter reported to have. To be honest after reading the report and Pi's article I am really feeling that this whole report is nothing more than an ad to "Facebook friends of founders". I am a bit hesitant of this research paper and its findings.

So, either way, it was interesting looking into all this stuff and seeing some of these percentages and where they come from (and in this case I still really don't know where they came from). Thanks for reading this far and not just running away screaming!

Well, that was, Complex. Thanks. It helped me feel...somehow, better.
I do admit though, I did not read any of the links. Just your quotes and text.
I did read it all and then when I was done, had to run away screaming but I came back. My co-workers did think it odd though.

I'm somewhat running into this on the R10 quadcopter. I opted for the package that included a Q2 controller which was another Kickstarter. Whatever backroom deal they worked out has since fallen through and now the Q2 people apparently want more money. The R10 people are offering a refund to the equivalent tier without the Q2 but it sounds like I'll be eating the Kickstarter and Amazon fees of the difference.

Doesn't look good for Death Inc. 7 days left and only a quarter funded. I figured that it would really take off after they put out a super early demo for people to get a taste of the game, I guess not :(. I do hope that they have a back-up plan, it would be a shame if they couldn't get it off the ground after this, even with all the recent publicity.

I am really excited about this for a couple of reasons: the original Zombicide board game is one of my favorite games of the past couple of years and the company has done some excellent post-release support with the game. I missed out on the first Kickstarter campaign so I didn't get all the cool goodies but I signed up for this one right away.

I am really excited about this for a couple of reasons: the original Zombicide board game is one of my favorite games of the past couple of years and the company has done some excellent post-release support with the game. I missed out on the first Kickstarter campaign so I didn't get all the cool goodies but I signed up for this one right away.

Ooh, never got in on the first one, though do own the game now. I may have to go for the $150 pledge - it will be my first kickstarter.

I am really excited about this for a couple of reasons: the original Zombicide board game is one of my favorite games of the past couple of years and the company has done some excellent post-release support with the game. I missed out on the first Kickstarter campaign so I didn't get all the cool goodies but I signed up for this one right away.

Ooh, never got in on the first one, though do own the game now. I may have to go for the $150 pledge - it will be my first kickstarter.

They've already hit several levels of stretch goals -- new sculpts for all the zombies, two KS exclusive characters, dice, and a really close to a third character.